Emma Donoghue

is my current authorial obsession. I stumbled across her novel Hood a year or so ago in my university library and it's been a passionate love affair ever since. I about fainted with delight when I ran across a copy of Kissing the Witch in a tiny bookstore in Florida this summer. Her novel Slammerkin was mesmerizing and traumatic. I didn't want to read it but I couldn't put it down. And currently I'm reading her work Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801. Not that I actually have time to read it, but the only way I can get a copy is through inter-library loan through the university. Public library doesn't have it, bookstores don't have it, and I can't afford to buy it off amazon anyway. I'll make time if I have to, for Emma Donoghue. Her historical fiction is vivid and alive, her prose flawless, and she's witty and funny (she calls Horace Walpole "a big fag"). And, judging from the author photos, she's pretty cute too. She's got a new book out (HUZZAH!! I can die happy!) and Jessica Lee Jernigan, who's a far better book blogger than I, has been featuring Donoghue's work this past week. There are interviews about Slammerkin , her new novel Life Mask, and posts about Passions and Kissing the Witch. I keep trying to imagine what she must sound like in the interviews, with her lilting Irish accent...(Author crushes are so much more enjoyable than teacher crushes, let me tell you.) Anyway there's a post about Donoghue's book The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits in the archives for April, but I haven't figure out how to put up a link. I need to fix the archives up a bit.